All things that Suck, and a few things that are Awesome

Tag Archives: Government

So here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months (besides not posting a damn thing on Everything Sucks). I was working a new job which over the course of a half-year became unbearable. I worked for two package shipping companies which as you would expect was a mistake during the holiday season. I made it through peak season but instantly quit one of the jobs afterwards. Thinking about going back to that job makes me physically ill.

My sister said that motivation is like a muscle: you can only use it so much. She might’ve stolen that from somewhere so don’t blame me for stealing someone’s quote because I didn’t know about it. I suppose that working two jobs outside in the winter wore me out a bit and the blog suffered from neglect (along with my diet, my weight, my happiness, and my sobriety, etc.). I intend to change that now that I’ve quit.

A few of my older posts were rather political. Now don’t get me wrong, Donald Trump is a piece of shit and probably the worst president we’ve ever had, but there isn’t any point in blogging about it. The way I see it there is way too much political shit out there and I’m really worried that people are becoming fatigued by it. Trump Sucks, Trump Sucks day after day but we’re stuck with him so why fucking throw it up on the news nonstop. People are just to the point that they don’t give a fuck to hear anymore, or at least I am.

I took a break from the constant stream of news and toxic social media and the quality of my life improved immensely. Others should try not being exposed as much.

More to the point, why should I blog about it? As much as I’d like to think that I can change people’s minds I probably can’t. If the (“failing”) New York Times can’t get Trump supporters to change their minds with actual in-depth reporting why the fuck would some random unknown blogger such as TheBlackHairedGuy change any minds? It would be like expecting this shit to actually change my (or any anti-Trumpers) mind. It won’t and it works both ways. Their stupid shit won’t change my mind, and my stupid shit won’t change their minds.

Writing about politics itself Sucks. Trump is so goddamn all over the place I’d be chasing headline after headline and that’s exhausting. Even though it’d be “popular” to shit on Trump it’s a very cheap sort of popularity. Political posts also age very quickly and my last post about the Nazi dudes is such long forgotten news that it’s pointless to even have it up anymore. Do you even remember RyanCare? I sure didn’t.

I want Everything Sucks to be about things that Suck, but I want it to be in a fun and maybe depressing way. A sort of “Haha, life is shit, but it’s kinda funny.” So that’s what I’m going to try to stick to. And goodbye to the political posts because they Suck.

I’ve recently been experimenting with Facebook advertising and this blog. I’ve known consciously for a long time that any endeavour is successful in a large part by how you sell yourself: you can’t just have a really good blog or business or whatever and expect that word of mouth can carry you to success. You could have the best damn widget ever and no one will ever buy it if they don’t know about it. There is a lot of hard work and shamelessly selling yourself on the road to success. I say I’ve known this consciously because while I’ve known it, I didn’t really believe it at a really deep level. Anyways, while I want this blog to be successful, I don’t really intend for it to be an actual business. I figure if I get a bunch of readers I could sell T-shirts or something, mostly so people can rock my sister’s logo design, but it isn’t a get-rich-quick sort of scheme. It would be cool to get more readers, and see if that whole “selling yourself” idea works, and it would be an interesting experiment if I ever did try to start a business. So that was my motivation behind advertising, to see how effective it really is and to learn from it.

So I advertised (“boosted” in Facebook parlance) a few of my posts. The first one I advertised was the post about writing and typing; it was a fairly tame post that I figured people might find enjoyable. If you clicked the link you can see that it did get quite a bit of shares, more so than most other posts (33! Shit! I didn’t know it did that good!). Anyways, advertising on Facebook is cheap, easy, and does seem to get your message out to people. It also allows you to pick your audience by selecting interests that you want to target for your audience. Obviously for that post I selected people who liked reading, writing, and blogging. You want to advertise to people who the message will resonate with, obviously. More on that shortly…

For advertising my second post I wanted to go right for that juicy market that is Donald Trump hatred, and selected my scathing but fun post on covfefe. (And got 55 Facebook shares?!) It wasn’t so much trying to get those sort of readers, just that my first advertised post was fairly tame, and I wanted to get in on the mess of politics. When it came time to pick my audience it was obvious to select those who identify as liberal and who possibly lean towards liberal views. Duh. Like I said before, you want to target people who your message will resonate with. But this seems really cheap and easy, so I also targeted those who were very conservative and who leaned conservative. In a recent post about Echo Chambers (which I learned from advertising the covfefe post), I railed against people reading shit that agrees with their views. To me, what’s the point of advertising an obviously liberal point of view to people who lean liberal? I’d just be contributing to the “echo chamber” problem so why not advertise to the conservatives? So that’s what I did…

And it was kind of a mess.

First off, it finally clicked in my head that I had just spent $25 to target conservatives with a very anti-Trump post, and if you care to check this blog’s Facebook page, some people weren’t happy at all about it. Curiously, a bunch of liberals “liked” the post, but few conservatives shit on it, so I’m assuming many of the people angered by it just ignored it. Still, that isn’t as bad as shitting all over the page like some people did and could’ve, but it’s still wasted money by going absolutely nowhere. Advertising on Facebook Sucks because you pay to target an audience, so you’d naturally pick those who agree with you. No one in their right mind would pay to target those who hate their ideas and views. Imagine if Shell or Mobil gas tried to target electric car owners? Or if Tyson Foods advertised towards vegans and vegetarians:iIt’d be a waste of money.

Secondly, I don’t think this would get any sort of conversation going at all. Not a single conservative voter will read my blog posts and go “Hmm. He has a point. Trump is bad, what was I thinking?” The political posts I write are some vulgar, simple, and easy hit pieces on Trump and the Right, mostly because they make such obvious and easy targets on a page called Everything Sucks. While I don’t want my blog to only appeal and to target liberal-minded voters, trying to actually get a conversation going (while simultaneously shitting on Trump) on Facebook seems pretty stupid and futile. I mean if a newspaper as prestigious as the New York Times (“the failing @NYTimes”) can be labeled “Fake News” and shit on by Trump supporters, why would Everything Sucks and Facebook Advertising change anyone’s mind? It won’t…and I’d be dumb as hell to think it would.

So, in short, Facebook advertising is pretty cool if you just want to shamelessly support a page, company, blog, or whatever. It does work and is fantastic at getting your product (or whatever) out in the world for people to notice and perhaps utilize. This puts the success of your whatever on it’s quality and not if people have heard about it or not. My two blog posts got tons of views and shares after I advertised them, but in terms of trying to advertise to those who disagree? Hell no, because no one wants to spend money to reach people who will hate their message. Even if I’m trying to be inclusive and not contribute to creating my very own echo chamber, Facebook advertising sort of encourages advertising to people who will be supportive of your message. Facebook makes it so you can target an audience who will like your message, but this ease in getting positive feedback discourages any willful targeting of a dissenting audience, further contributing to people hearing what they want to hear. Facebook Advertising Sucks in getting a conversation going and further contributes to the problem of people having Echo Chambers where they can hear facts and opinions that already support their own opinions.

As a liberal-leaning person, I get really pissed off when my obvious conservative friends and acquaintances share news stories from Fox News. These stories are obviously biased (“But only because the mainstream media is left-biased!”) and I don’t understand why anyone would ever be proud of getting their news from such a biased source. But Fox News isn’t even that bad compared to Breitbart or some of the other really questionable news sources out there. I’m talking the American News sites out there. Everything on these sites are so perfectly geared to target the conservative mindset it’s almost unbelievable. I don’t get how people can read shit that just confirms everything they believe and not be any bit suspicious of it.

I used the conservative news outlets as an example because they are most obvious to me as a left-leaning person. But the thing is that the left has it’s own bullshit websites and it’s own news (or even “news”) networks that conjure up the same hate and nonsense that the right has. It isn’t as visible (to me at least) but it’s there and it’s equally pathetic.

For the equivalent of Fox News you have MSNBC. While Fox has shit to prop up the conservative agenda and try to make Trump out to be a masterful genius, MSNBC does the exact same thing in the opposite direction by demonizing him. Everything is how terrible Trump is, how he’s destroying America, how he’s moments away from being impeached, and while the stories do present facts, the speculation and “meaning” of those facts is used to paint Trump is a highly negative view. How about Huffington Post? Nope. I’ve read enough stories from there to know that it’s going to be feel-good liberal propaganda to get me and other like-minded people riled up about Trump. I don’t know how Mother Jones compares to American News, but they seem to be nearly equal and opposites of the same idea: fear mongering to appeal to a single side. Democracy Now! seems even worse though, go check it out.

I really think part of the problem with our current state of sensationalized, polarized politics is due to this sort of one-sided news reporting, where facts take second stage to the speculation behind a story. Facts are pretty damn tame stuff that sound boring. Do an experiment for yourself: go to the BBC News website and then go to either American News, Mother Jones, or Democracy Now! and check out how “important and scary” the headlines sound; how scary is the world we live in? The BBC reports some boring facts: Trump got his travel ban knocked down (again), there was an earthquake in Greenland, and…whatever. The Huffington Post declares that “TRUMP SLIPS ON BAN APPEAL.” Same news story with the same facts but different presentation in the headline. American News pronounces on a video that “Anti Sharia Law Rallies Erupt in Major Cities Across the Country – Chaos Ensues [LOOK]” Wow. Holy shit! Apparently people are trying to push Sharia law in the US and there’s basically a WAR going on over how crazy this is? Apparently the BBC doesn’t give two shits about it, probably because it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap conservative news website shoveled out to rally their base. HuffPost also mentions that a congressman unveiled an impeachment draft against Trump, which is curiously absent from the front page of the other two websites, almost as if it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap liberal news website shoveled out to rally their base. Democracy Now! has a damn category at the top called “Impeachment.” Protip: Trump isn’t immediately on the verge of being impeached (He’s going to be impeached — I’ll bet money on it — but it doesn’t require a headline yet.). CNN, just for shits and giggles declares that “Dennis Rodman heading to North Korea.” CNN has good bigly news people…[Like everything else, I wrote this shit yesterday so the headlines changed; you won’t see the headlines I mentioned. I can’t keep up with this shit.]

I’m not saying the BBC are infallible journalists or whatever, they just seem to present dry facts with minimal bullshit that these other examples present. My point here is that if you are a conservative and only read/watch conservative news, aren’t you just being spoonfed a bunch of shit that you already know and that makes you feel comfortable in your worldview? The same goes for a liberal person as well: if you already know for a fact that Trump is the devil himself, why do you need to read a bunch of shit confirming it? Whenever I see a link shared on Facebook from HuffPost or Democracy Now! I never click it because I know it’s going to be shit. Same when I see a Fox News or American News or Liberty-Whatever-The-Fuck-News from someone proclaiming “They’re going to take our guns!” It’s confirmation bias in a near textbook form — no one wants to possibly accept a different worldview so we close our minds off from the possibility while simultaneously thinking we’re being open to new facts but not really.

It doesn’t all involve simple news websites and channels as well: it also applies to social media. I think I’ll write more about this later, but we all have our favor sites to visit and people to interact with. Do these influence our worldview in a negative way? Do they tell us happy things we already know? Do they scare us into sticking with our current beliefs? I frequent Reddit, and I’ll use it as an example. Check out the World News subreddit. It leans left and if you look at any posts about Donald Trump it will have tons of hate. It’s fun to read too. Now check out The_Donald. It speaks for itself. They’re Echo Chambers: places to hear the same confirming facts over and over again.

So, obviously, that all Sucks. There are facts – indisputable facts – but the interpretation of those facts is down to whoever you seem to ask. If all you read are these borderline news websites that just regurgitate your worldview you aren’t learning anything and aren’t doing anything to solve the problem. We all have our Echo Chambers that solidify our worldviews and this does nobody any favors. This applies to both political outlooks conservative and liberal alike, so don’t think you’re up on a high horse when everyone else is stupid. It goes without saying that this lack of mixing ideas and compromising Sucks and has a large part to play in how polarized our current state of politics is.

As you can probably see, this is filed under the category of Politics Suck. This being its own category means something; it means that in my mind I intended for the politics portion to take up a notable spot on this blog. Some other categories like People Suck and Society Sucks are large, but you would expect them to be large because people are that shitty in general — there isn’t much surprise there. But outside of Video Games Suck, Politics Suck seems to be a pretty damn narrow niche category that hasn’t had any posts. What the fuck is going on here?

I have to admit this category is partly inspired by Donald Trump being the Worst Candidate Ever and our wonderfulest 45th President of the United States of America. Go figure. I didn’t think it would actually happen but here we are with a damn reality TV star leading the free world. As you can probably guess, I’m not a fan as the guy stands antithetic to everything I love and hold dear, like facts, logic, not melting down on social media like a teenager, and spelling words correctly. It only makes sense that I would want to channel my loathing for the dude and his stupid policies into a series of posts collectively labeled Politics Suck. Outside of this, Politics Suck was supposed to be a general category driven by world affairs, governance, stupid partisan politics, the economy, and other shit that Sucks in those general categories. But the current situation in the US — with me being a citizen — would naturally take center stage and Trump is just too good (awful) to pass up writing about! He’s a goldmine if you have a blog called Everything Sucks. As you can see, this is only the second post, so what gives? Trump is making headline after headline and yet I’ve been silent except for the failed healthcare act #1 about two months ago. What’s up with that?

Donald Trump Sucks, but he sucks in a way that I’m unable to comprehend and process in a timely fashion.

I’m case you weren’t aware, the guy is a mess. And in case you weren’t aware, my blog posts takes quite awhile to churn out. Trump sucks in a large way by how I simply can’t keep up with his endless bullshit. It’s kind of funny but also really sad in a way. I envisioned post after post about he sucks and how he fucks up in all of his narcissistic Trumpian ways, but holy fuck, I can’t keep up and even begin to comprehend the individual fuck ups enough to write proper posts about them! It never fails: when one new story breaks on how awful he is there is another one that appears quickly on the heels of the first one. His presidency is a lightning round of bullshit that I can’t keep up with.

Are we gr9 agen yet?

First there was…see I can’t even recall it! Oh yeah, the executive orders that did a whole bunch of shit but nothing really. I remembered how he whined about Obama’s executive order “abuses” back in the day, but before I could write about that, he was on to getting his immigration thingy repealed. And there was some shit about the inauguration crowd size and “alternative facts” and God stopping the rain. Something about a plan to defeat ISIS? Right? Talking up the economy and keeping jobs in ‘Murika. Magically, I was almost able to make a real post about the first health care bill — the single highlight (so far) of my blogging during the Trump regime — but then, somehow, things got even crazier. There was another blur of whatthefuckhappened and we bombed Syria and the North Koreans did some shit with a parade and bombs and rockets and Trump was mad. And most recently, James Comey was fired, Trump met with some Russians, and he also leaked some important shit that he probably shouldn’t have. And who knows what will transpire before I finally hit the “post” button. (Update: I wrote all of that a few days ago, and in that time there was a special counsel appointed to look into the matter, and Trump has had another meltdown on Twitter about “witch hunts.” See what I mean?)

My point here is clear: I can’t keep up. Out of all that shit I just recalled I did a single post. And it was a shitty one. Each one of these incidents, and the ones I forgot about, could’ve been their own posts where I made some pointed observations about President Drumpf but I fumbled the ball because the passes came way too fast for me to handle. The guy is a pro at churning out headline after headline that you simply can’t keep track of. Seriously. I think back to the campaign and think, “Why was Trump so bad?” and I legitimately can’t think of much, but it’s not so much from lacking bad shit, it’s because there’s so much bad shit that nothing stands out in any clear manner. All shit stinks so you won’t notice anything really unless there is some really bad shit to stink really badly. Think of Bill Clinton’s presidency: boring, NAFTA, MONICA LEWINSKY, boring, boring. What stands out? Think of Nixon: debating JFK on TV, finally won, Vietnam, WATERGATE, RESIGNATION, boring career. What stands out? But with Trump it’s BUILD A WALL, BAD HOMBRES BRINGING DRUGS, BAN MUSLIMS, NUKES ARE COOL RIGHT?, I’VE GOT BIG HANDS, SMARTER THAN GENERALS, TED CRUZ’S DAD KILLED KENNEDY, NASHTY WOMMAN, NATO SUCKS PAY UP, GRAB HER BY THE PUSSY, I DID TRY TO FUCK HER, BIGGEST INAUGURATION CROWD EVAR, NATO IS OKAY, LOCK HER UP, I’M NOT GUNNA LOCK HER UP NEVERMIND, CAN’T REPEAL OBAMACARE, GOLFIN’, NORF KOREA IS BAD GUYS, COMEY “YOU’RE FIRED” BUT ONLY AFTER 110 DAYS, RUSSIANS ARE MY FWEINDS, HEY I KNOW TOP SECRET INTEL TOO GUISE. Okay, phew. Now seriously, what stands out? NOTHING DOES BECAUSE IT’S ALL INTENSE BULLSHIT. So in retrospect he seems really awful but you can’t point out anything specific because it’s all bad.

That’s the best illustration of my problem so far guys. Trump is so awful, and Sucks in such an incomprehensible manner that I don’t have the time to write proper posts to fill my Politics Suck portion of my blog. I really need to get on it and churn shit out because it is my problem, but it’s hard when your primary source for things that Suck is so Goddamn prolific. If you give the guy credit for anything, give him credit for that: he sucks so much no one can keep up with it, let alone me and my quaint little blog.

As you probably know, the bill that was supposed to repeal and replace Obamacare didn’t have the required votes to pass the House of Representatives so they pulled the bill. That bill, officially known as the American Health Care Act, or as it will probably be known to history as Ryancare (or Trumpcare, or Republicare? lol), had a rocky start from the beginning. Wasn’t the bill drafted in secrecy and was kept locked away from people? Being a bill that was meant to change federal law on health care you’d expect secrecy probably wasn’t the best route to go with, and it started the bill off in a bad way. Publicity for it didn’t get any better as people learned what was in it: 24 million people would lose insurance, medicare funding would be rolled back, pre-existing conditions would be a thing again, among other provisions. The bill had an approval rating of 17%, which was an insanely low number. People called and bitched to their representatives, and I don’t see how anyone actually wanted it to pass except those asshats that dwell in the House of Representatives.

Obamacare Sucks (aka the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), and I’m not here to defend it by any means, but it’s sort of okay. There’s some cool parts to it, and there are some bad parts. I for one don’t like the idea of mandating that people buy something; it just seems like a surefire way of making prices skyrocket (Because if people have to buy your product, why not jack up the price?). But it’s okay. It can be fixed, and at the very worst, it could be repealed. We did “okay” without the ACA before 2007, and the US wouldn’t fall apart if it was repealed. And that’s what I expected after November: a flat-out repeal of Obamacare! There was a Republican controlled House, Senate, and a Republican in the White House. How could the damn thing not be repealed after years and years of people bitching about how awful Obamacare was?

Well, that’s what I’m getting at here. The bill didn’t pass, but it wasn’t due to the Democrats controlling the legislature, or by having a president slap the thing down with a veto: it failed because of how incompetent the Republican party is and how terrible the bill was. Dear Leader Trump blamed the Democrats for the bill’s failure; after all not a single Democrat voted for it so “obviously” it was their fault it didn’t pass. But when your own party is in control of everything you don’t need the Democrats’ votes you fucking idiot. The bill failed because they couldn’t even get Republicans on board with how shitty it was.

The hardcore-right Republicans (the Freedom Caucus) hated the bill because it wasn’t extreme enough; they wanted a full-out repeal of Obamacare (once again, wasn’t this the goal?) They wanted Obamacare murdered and gutted whereas the bill sort of halfass did away with certain provisions of it in an attempt to dance around a full repeal. The moderate Republicans didn’t like the bill because people would lose insurance and it wouldn’t really help anything. These people probably had that angry 80% of the population calling and griping to them about the bill and didn’t want to get screwed over in the midterms. Anyways, Republicans couldn’t even agree on it, and even though they control everything, they still couldn’t pass the damn thing.

“Obamacare is the law of the land. It is going to remain the law of the land until it is replaced…We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

-Paul Ryan

And let’s not forget that the whole “repeal Obamacare” thing has been being repeated over and over for the past 7 years. There was plenty of time to conjure up some health care bill that would get rid of the ACA and give the free market the power and freedom it needs to please conservatives and maybe lower prices. Nope. Let’s pull a bill out of our asses in a couple of weeks and have a vote on it! Let’s also ignore the fact that healthcare is a very hard topic to play with, and it has burned almost everyone who attempted to work on it. Let’s do that first!

How much do you have to Suck to fuck up that bad? I, like everyone else, was certain Obamacare was going to be destroyed within a month of the inauguration and somehow the Republicans fuck up bad enough that it remains. “Obamacare will remain the law of the land.” Seriously? You fucks said you’d repeal Obamacare over and over the past however many years and even with control of the House, the Senate, and the White House you guys still couldn’t do it? Welcome to my blog, Republican representatives; You people really do Suck.